First day in Mazar

Mazar-i-Sharif is very hot today.
Even in my underwear with the fan turned up high, I feel rather heroic mustering up the energy to tap feebly at the laptop keys in our new bedroom. I hope this is only because I am still recovering from my travels, and in particular from yesterday’s exertions. The crowning glory was walking across one of those heroic Soviet misnomers, the Friendship Bridge, which crosses the sleepy Jaxartes river to link Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and was used first by invading armies of the USSR. It is a long and monotonous bridge, and I walked it in the midday sun, shrouded in layers of suitably modest garb, trailing my 30 or so kilos of truly indispensable belongings. When I reached the other side, the friendly group of Korean NGO workers who had walked a few hundred yards ahead of me, smiled encouragingly. The man among them detached himself from the group, and approached me proffering a bottle of cool water with these words “We think you should drink some water. Your face is red and your lips are already cracking”. They knew I was about to meet my husband and so must have known I wanted to look my best.
Once the Afghan border guards, who seemed rather festive and ceremonious in comparison with their truculent paunchy Uzbek counterparts, had cursorily inspected my passport, one of them invited me to sit under a tree and lay down my bags. He handed me a note from Ed saying that he had gone for lunch (having waited all morning, I supposed), and brushed crumbs off the bench on which I was to sit. I did not sit long, for as soon as I let out a little cry of dismay at the thought of lunch being had without me, another guard immediately brought out his mobile phone to dial Ed’s number.

My favourite aspect of the Uzbek side of the crossing, which consists of many hurdles and booths to be visited for various inspections, stamps and mysterious scraps of paper, was a swallow’s nest. It had been built in the corner of the ceiling directly above one of these booths, which presents a face of shaded glass, with a small round hole at about the height of my navel, through which travellers hasten to stuff their passports for inspection. When I arrived at this booth, it was already surrounded by a little group of Afghans who clustered around the port hole, anxiously awaiting the fate of the passports they had earlier thrust through the aperture. As I hung back waiting, I watched the mother and father swallows ministering to their brood. The four seemed rather a spoilt lot: although they were nearly as big as their parents, indeed too big for the nest, so that one had been pushed out on to the adjacent ledge, the all opened their yellow beaks very wide and round as soon as one of their valiant parent approached with a morsel. I was fascinated to watch how the parents fed their children in strict rotation, and never gave a morsel to the same one twice in a row. They I noticed that almost as soon as each fledgling had finished swallowing, he or she would nudge around in the nest so that his back end and tail would be poking over the nest, and release a round and perfectly formed poo. These were moist and thus invariably adhered to the hair of whichever supplicant happened in that moment to be bent over with his face pressed against the round hole in the glass of the booth. Having taken note of this, and had a secret giggle about it with one of the Afghans who had also noticed, I approached the booth from the other side when my turn came.

I was sorry to be so puce of face when I met Ed, but otherwise it was of course a delight to be at last together, and in a big jeep speeding towards our new home. In all the excitement, he forgot to carry me across the threshold, but I now know that he had meant to.
I had already spent a week in Mazar in November, and so did not add anything new to my impressions of the city in the course of yesterday’s drive to the guesthouse: dusty roads, hastily erected Soviet style apartment blocks daubed in Dari signs, and ramshackle street stalls. But different produce glimpsed on the stalls: I was pleased to see piles of mangoes, melons and aubergines. When I got out of the jeep outside the guesthouse, again as last time, a woman in a skyblue burqa wafted by, turning the lace portcullis like a submarine’s periscope to keep me in her sights for as long as possible as she hastened by. Was there any point smiling at her as I could not hope to see a smile in return? I noticed that she had shiny, high heeled shoes though.
In the guesthouse where Ed and I will live for the foreseeable future (up to a year, I have been telling people), we are looked after by two men whom I shall call Sugar Lump and Friday, as this is how their names translate into English. Between them, they guard the premises, cook and clean for us and whoever else among the employees and friends of FACTUM happens to pass through town. But there is also a washerwoman, as Sugar Lump reminded Ed when he came back from the office today for lunch. Why had I not ventured out of the house all morning, he wanted to know. I should not have been afraid (or shy, perhaps), because the washerwoman was about, too. He asked Ed over lunch if I had not been very bored, all alone all morning. They will continue to speak to me through Ed, I expect, even when my Dari does improve beyond the mere basics, as they are very polite.

Ed came back for lunch brandishing a clutch of wedding gifts from one of his new friends, an archaeologist: the most unexpected was a plaster cast in Italianate style of the Madonna and Child, in a very elaborate baroque architectural setting. Ed suspects his friend of being a bit of a Sufi. We had a very nice meal of stewed aubergines with rice, chips, salad, and two kinds of melon. It makes me feel rather sleepy, in this heat.